The Tower of Magic

Synopsis
The group stays in the tower of magic for an extra day, to seek answers, protection and await teleportation. Numerous encounters are made. This is the first appearance of Skullyana. Eiluvial is given a Kinsight Spectacle connected to one owned by the Master of the Tower, a Drow named Dalamar.

The group is teleported to the outskirts of Gorith and it soon encounters members of the Rennir tribe. It is discovered that the Tafled's situation is not all good right now. The party gets horses and heads North as fast as it can. They battle centaurs along the way.

The party reaches the Tafled village, only to find it almost completely empty. Eshe awaits for them at the door.

Summary
The group is still standing in Dalamar's office when he asks them if they have any additional inquiries that they want to be answered right away. After receiving a few shrugs and shakes as an answer, the man decides to close the encounter. "Then I guess I will see you later this evening; well Thorralien and Eiluvial." The group respectfully agrees and takes its leaving, deciding to meet up in the hallway to make plans for the rest of the day.

As the doors close behind Thorralien, who had to push the overexcited sorceress out of the room, a cloud of purple smoke appears in front of the party. After a second or two, the smoke turned into a man of average height. Standing there like a butler, the man observed each party member individually before breaking the silence with an inquiry: "Is there anything you would wish to do, during the afternoon?" Taken aback by the question, the members of the team take a few seconds to think this question through, carefully, before replying. Thorralien requests to see his spear, Kylie wishes to see the library, Shyntlara wants to follow her ring, Cherryl requires a good location to play the mandolin and, finally, Eiluvial decides to head off to her room.

To each statement, the butler agreed, it seemed rather reasonable. After passing through the whole group, he nodded in agreement one last time and four clouds of smoke appeared; each bearer of another identical butler. "Very well," they started, "please follow me." And with that the clones starting walking in different directions, taking different paths and hallways to lead all the party members to their destinations.

Cherryl: goes in the cafet and starts playing music

Kylie: goes in the library and reads and reads on the stars. ends up meeting a guy and she is confirmed of the disappearance of Paladin's constellation and another one

Shyntlara: gets to her ring and tries to see, she is blocked and ends up walking around.

Thorralien: Gets to his spear, gets bored, walks around, girl starts talking to him

Eiluvial: Nap + Negib he walks in and gives the ring. He also starts interrogating her, but she does not reply and he leaves frustrated.

Eiluvial walks downstairs and meets up with Thorralien who's being held up by the girl. After a short exchange, he agrees to leave the room with her and head for the cafeteria where Cherryl still is. Kylie soon joins to eat. Eiluvial explains that Negib and the girl seem the be really intrigued by their trip up north in Gorith. Kylie also mentions that her god seems to have dissapeared from the stars, which worries her. The group starts trying to make a plan.

Meanwhile, Shyntlara is walking around when she stumbles upon a short girl who seems to know her (Skull). The druid is looking for her long lost friend, Tikuris. Shyntlara awkwardly mentions the death of the elf. “What do you mean, Tiku’s dead..?” “She—was killed by a drake during an attack 2 nights ago. She was on watch duty and by the time we woke up, she had already been fighting for a while. She didn’t survive their final acid blast.” Eiluvial, who was tired from the conversation downstairs walks in on the duo at that time. The aasimar bursts into tears and joins the crying druid on the ground. Skull is inquired as to how she knew Tiku: “The name’s Skullyana, I met Tikuris a few years back--” “Forgive my intrusion, but the headmaster is ready to see you all”

Downstairs, the same thing happens, so everyone decides to head upstairs, there's nothing else to do anyways.

Eiluvial's POV:

- discussion with head master and monocle

- a guy recognized Cheryl, mandolin teacher

- try to describe the wizard

- come to the conclusion that it must be him, but it’s impossible

- the director talks to us about the huge tree in gorith

- we decide to head for there

- we learn that the students can’t go because you don’t find that tree when you look for it and you can only find it once in your life

- give the tiara to the headmaster for repairs

- the headmaster agrees to teleport us close to gorith and give us a monocle to communicate on Saturday nights

- he informs us that we’ll be leaving by the next morning

- we thank him and leave

- shyn takes skull away to talk to her in her room

- thorralien goes to talk to the girl

- I talk with the guy, 1 question, 1 answer. I explain a tad about the map, but stay vague with stuff related to symbols, I translated it, we’re a group travelling, we want to get back to our village because we fear that something might be up. He’s curious because he wants to get out of the tower and see the tree, he never really went to gorith, he asks that we stay in communication and I agree

- off to sleep

- get woken up in the morning and we head down for the teleportation

- tiara is given back, it increases electrical powers

- teleportation

- we arrive in gorith

- we stumble upon a group that just trapped a huge beast and its babies “Oi!”

- they recognize the princess of copper, supposed to be on exile, they tell us that shit went down in the tafled village, but don’t really explain more

- we ask them for a nearby village with horses, they guide us

- we thank them and go our way

- we get horses for everyone

- we rush to tafled

- we fight centaurs along the way (Cheryl desguises herself, I side step with the horses to give some place to the others, thorralien lends hits before we’re separated, dehydrating touch on a centaur, Cheryl damages as well, centaur dies, I shoot another one with snowball and make his veins explode in frost

- we get back on our horses and head off

In the distance the Tafled’s village finally broke the horizon, appearing to our eyes in the beauty of the sunset. Our hometown finally broke the regular wildness of the forest, a little piece of a Gorithian civilization in the middle of acres and acres of forest full of wildlife and giants. Stupid giants.. My heartbeat increased at the sight of my hometown. Apprehension? Happiness? I don’t really know why. From here, everything seemed to be alright, there was nothing to break the perfect structure of our hometown. The buildings were standing tall and strong, no corpses, no fires ravaging town—actually not really any fire at all. Alright, there were probably one or two still light up here and there, but that wasn’t normal. Tafled usually counted a good amount of fires ongoing at all time, for cooking purposes, to warm up the cold, to smoke the little fish we would find when we’d leave on long distance trips, and so much more. And now.. There didn’t even seem to be anyone really.

My hometown looked like a ghost village from here.

Anxious, I turned slightly to face Thorralien. A frown appeared on my face, I could just feel it. Was I just imagining things, getting crazy over something that wasn’t in any way truth, or was this really reality? It didn’t take long, just a second of scanning the barbarian’s face in hope of finding his usual calmness. Nothing of that was visible. Thorralien was as confused as I was about the condition in which the village standing of us truly was. This wasn’t the hometown we knew, something had happened and emptied the usually lively streets of our piece of home. Apprehensive, I tightened my grasp around the reins I was already holding and gave a firm nudge on the sides of my horse. I had to make sure that this was simply a dream and that everyone was alright. Perhaps the townsfolks were just in the woods, hunting or celebrating a recent victory we simply didn’t know of. Perhaps Eleonore had a vision of another holiday that everyone should celebrate? That was a possibility—right? As I started increasing my pace down the hill, I saw a black shape bypass me on my left. Thorralien was doing just the same as I was, he was trying to get to the village as fast as he could. He’d probably get there before me, he’d check around quickly and come back out with a stupid grin, saying that everyone was simply in the main hall.. Yes, he would.

Behind us, I hear the tapping of other horses speeding; the rest of the group was following. Poor them, they probably weren’t understanding anything whatsoever of what was happening right now. They’d probably blame it on the Gorithian blood, there was nothing to worry about; I’d just tell them that we were being silly because the town is alright.

At last, after what seemed like an hour, our group reached the last 200 meters before getting to the gate of the town. Suddenly, Thorralien stopped his horse without warning, surprising me and almost causing an accident. Thankfully, I halted my horse in time and joined the barbarian’s side. In front of us stood Eshe. The old lady with tired eyes was the previous oracle, the one that gave her place away 5-ish years ago. Reading the incomprehension and distress in our eyes, the old woman raised her hand slightly and stopped us from talking. Thorralien and I exchanged a fearful glance as the old lady took a deep breath.

“Everyone is gone,” she sighed helplessly.

New Characters
Eshe: Previous Oracle of the Tafled.

Skullyana: New member of the party. She is one of Tikuris' old friend and is constantly followed by a tiger name Sir Buttons.